Chapter 204 - 203 River Of The Dead (2)

'You have leveled up to level 38.'

As Marcus received the level up notification after he killed the undead mass that had been trying to eat him, the zombie knight stepped forward to engage Marcus once again.

Using his speed burst skill to avoid the first strike, Marcus created some distance for himself and began casting his buff spells.

'Spirit blaze, legs of light, lightning strider, iro- crap.'

Before he could cast all of his buff spells the huge spinosaurus like zombie appeared behind him and bit down towards him.

Luckily Marcus' danger sense had warned him of the incoming attack and with his knew speed enchantments he was able nimbly move out if the way.

However, the zombie knight was quickly on him again, but this time Marcus was able to parry its attacks now that he knew how strong it was and he had some enhancements to strengthen him.

Fighting for his life against the two powerful undead, Marcus was doing a good job at keeping the two at bay, but his power was slowly waning.

It was only a matter of time before he was out of mana, or his embodiment of light overwhelmed him, and Marcus knew he needed to win the fight before then.

Trading blow after blow Marcus eventually managed to create an opening and knock the zombie knight's sword up and taking one hand off of his scythe fired a laser spell right into its center.

Yet instead of the spell piercing through it, a phantom shield that was not there before appeared in front of the zombie knight taking the laser spell head on.

And as Marcus was stunned by his killer move being blocked, the spinosaurus zombie released another blast of its dark breath not caring that it would also hit its master.

Throwing up a wall of darkness behind him, Marcus was able to block most of the dark flames though a few busted past his wall of darkness and burned him.

'Owowowow.'

It had been a long time since Marcus had felt this level of pain, but the dark flames did not only hurt his physical form but also his soul.

Unfortunately, Marcus had no time to deal with the pain as the zombie knight had recovered its stance and began trying to hack him to pieces again.

At this point Marcus thought about using his supreme skill, but he was already pretty worn down after killing thousands of zombies and the backlash might incapacitate him.

'Thunderbird strike.'

Trying his hand at using lightning magic Marcus cast a heighten thunderbird strike hoping that the attack's power would be enough to harm the zombie knight.

Alas, with the slash of its sword clad in an unhallow aura it swiped away Marcus' tier four spell and sent back a blast of energy towards Marcus.

Taking the zombie knight attack, Marcus felt his body and soul being shredded and dozens of wounds opened up all over him.

It as at this point that Marcus realized he had underestimated the dungeon. So far there had been very few enemies that could hurt him while he was ethereal, and he had taken this for granted thinking he always had a way out.

Now he was barely keeping up with two enemies that could hurt him whether he was ethereal or not, and he was soon to lose if things kept up.

Feeling pressured, Marcus was getting close to using his supreme skill even though he was already feeling overwhelmed just from using embodiment of light. 

He figured he would at least be able to take out the zombie knight before going down and maybe even the spinosaurus if her was lucky.

However, as he was about to commit to this, he heard a telepathic message from Roxene.

'Go ethereal.'

Trusting in his partner's words, Marcus went ethereal even though it would leave him practically defenseless against the zombie knight's attacks which could still hurt him.

Yet as the zombie knight swung its sword in for the kill, Roxene burst out of nowhere already enhanced by her supreme skill and smashed into the undead knight sending him back dozens of feet.

The huge spinosaurus zombie tried to bite down on Roxene who had interrupted it and its master battle, but before it could Roxene bent her head upwards and howled.

The visage of the sun then appeared above her before exploding out in a massive burst of searing light.

After the attack from Roxene's unique skill had dissipated, every lower level undead within around two hundred feet had been reduced to ash and even the zombie spinosaurus was severely injured and unable to move properly.

However, the zombie knight had protected itself with it shield again and was relatively unscathed, and a flicker of anger could be seen in its cold dead eyes.

Yet before it could lash out at Roxene, Marcus reappeared on her back and the young wolf set off running towards where the rest of the group was.

Nevertheless, even without its mount the zombie knight began rushing towards them surprisingly keeping up with Roxene.

"Eat this. Railgun."

As the zombie knight was chasing after them, Marcus now had enough breathing room to prepare his combination spell and fire it towards the zombie knight.

Moving at the speed of sound the compressed iron sphere impacted against the knight's shield, and as strong as the undead was, it was still pushed back over a thousand feet before coming to a stop.

Having broken out of the undead encirclement and escaped their pursuer, Marcus laid down on top of Roxene who was running at an incredible speed and began recovering. He had used up a lot of mana and the negative effects of using his embodiment of light were catching up with him.

'Damn what the hell was that thing, it was way too strong. Even with embodiment of light active I could not hurt it with a point black laser, and it even tanked Roxene's howl of day with ease.'

What Marcus did not know was how lucky he was to have escaped. The zombie he had been fighting was near the pinnacle of undead being a revenant knight, and in the dungeon, it was one of the strongest monsters only out classed by some of the boss monsters.

While he was laying on top of her, Roxene soon sent Marcus a mental message that she could no longer keep up her supreme skill and when she stopped, he rolled off of her.

Once Marcus was no longer on top of her Roxene began shrinking before she rolled over on her side and began panting painfully.

That was when Marcus noticed that Roxene's two front paws as well as her face and chest, were emitting a similar dark aura as the revenant knight and it was eating away at her.

Seeing this, Marcus summoned up all of the mana he had recovered and cast a healing spell on Roxene.

Unfortunately, the spell seemed to have no effect and Marcus began to panic.

At least until Roxene chided him and said, 'Stop spazzing out. I just got effected by its undead aura a bit and got hit with a death curse. Give me a few minutes and I will be fine.'

Hearing this Marcus started to become more worried since being hit with a death curse did not sound like something you just shrugged off, well at least for normal creatures.

'I told you I would be fine in a few minutes. Certainly, if I was a normal wolf this would kill me, but death curses eat away at your life span, but since I am immortal it cannot kill me, it just hurts.'

After that Marcus began to calm down and Roxene no longer needed to force herself to speak and focused on recovering.

And just as she said, within a few minutes the aura vanished having run its course, and Roxene shakily got up and said, 'Follow me to where the others are hiding. We got lucky and ran into a friendly beast down here and they are currently keeping them safe.'

Marcus looked at Roxene in confusion, a friendly beast in the dungeon did not sound right. In fact, to this point Marcus was not sure he had met any friendly beast that were not someone's beast companion. 

Nevertheless, all Marcus could do at this point was trust Roxene's judgment and hope that this beast really was friendly.

Moving further and further away from the river, Marcus soon was able to make out the figure of Lilia sitting in an outcropping of rocks, with Blitz sitting around her protectively while Lilia held the two golden lion cubs.

Yet as he got closer and was within ten feet of them, he picked up another signature from his life sense skill, one that he had felt before.

He could tell it was the same being that had got his attention while on watch last night, and Marcus immediately cast his gaze towards the area the signature was coming from.

Right on top of Lilia's head was where the creature had perched and now Marcus was certain it was tiny.

Pointing his finger at the not visible creature, Marcus was about to open fire on it until he heard it cry out in a high-pitched voice and say, "Please wait, I mean neither you nor any of your companions harm."

The little beast then appeared in front of Marcus letting out a perpetual soft glow.

Marcus was dumbfounded to see what had just appeared in front him, because it was a dragon, yet only the size of a kitten and it had butterfly wings.